The Gay Panic Defense Is Still on the Table In 30 states and five U.S. territories, a defendant retains the legal right to argue in court that his victim's sexual orientation provoked him into violence. The strategy is called the gay panic defense, and attorneys across most of the country are free to deploy it. Aaron McKinney raised it in 1998, after he and Russell Henderson beat a 21-year-old University of Wyoming student named Matthew Shepard into a coma, tied him to a fenc

He Passed as a Man in Falls City Until the Local Newspaper Printed His Name Brandon Teena moved to Falls City, Nebraska, in November 1993 with check forgery warrants trailing him out of Lincoln, and no one in Richardson County knowing his name. He was transgender and passing. Five weeks later, he was dead, killed by two men who learned his biological sex from a newspaper crime report the local sheriff's office handed to the press after his arrest. He passed easily as a man, b